Stocking Shelves—Getting Your Book into Brick and Mortar Stores

This post is USA orientated. I have no first-hand knowledge of UK, CA, AU practices on this subject. Let's go ahead and draw a distinction between a store like Books A Million (BAM) being able to order your books for a customer and being able and willing to order copies to sit on a shelf…

Promo Stacking

Let's break it down into parts. What is promo stacking? Promo stacking is when you use newsletter swaps, paid advertisements (FB ads, ENT, Robin Reads, Pretty Hot, etc), and other means of marketing around a specific time period. What's the point of promo stacking? Promo stacking is used to increase your readership through exposure and…

Where Do I Go To Publish?

Where do I go to publish? This is by far one of the most frequently asked questions I see novice writers ask. If you're going traditional, then this post isn't for you. Sorry, your publisher will handle all of that. If you're indie, that list starts rather small and then blossoms into an overwhelming list.…

Exploring Publishing Rights

First rights, World rights, One-time rights … the number of rights can make your head spin. Publishers look to rights, whether its first rights or reprint rights, specific markets and global. The rights dictate if something has been published before and can be the difference between earning 10¢ a word in a magazine publication vs…

Updating Browse Categories 2 to 10 on Amazon

Amazon lets you pick two categories when you upload a book. It's how readers find your book. Sometimes they are surfing the top 100 of this genre, or they might scroll the "Also Bought" of a favorite author. Did you know that you can expand that to 10 categories with a simple email? I say…

They Are Selling My Book For What?

Let's face it. We like to check ourselves out on Amazon from time to time. Sometimes we're hunting through the reviews, anguishing over the 1s and jumping for joy at the 5s, and something catches our eye. Here we see new/used copies of our book for sale. "How are people selling my book for double…

Global URLs

With the invention of the internet, people from all over the globe can read your book. You could be from the USA, France, Hong Kong, or anywhere and your readers might be from Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, even India or anywhere else in the world. You don't know if they found your book through…

Better Together—Linking Editions on Amazon

Maybe this is your first release or your hundredth. You’ve hit publish, it’s been a week—or several months—and your two versions (eBook and print) haven’t joined up when you click on either book’s page on Amazon. Step 1: You'll need the ASIN numbers. (The identification numbers Amazon assigns your book. This is RARELY your ISBN.)…

Free vs Perma-free

There are two styles of free when it comes to books, and there's a lot of confusion about when to use them effectively. Perma-free Perma-free is when a book is free all the time on multiple distributions (Amazon, Kobo, Google Play, your website, Draft2Digital). While free all the time makes it easy to schedule promos…

Why Won’t My Family Read My Book!!!

I totally get where this is coming from when novice writers scream in groups and on their social media. It's hard when you want your family to support you, but you can't see where they have been. There are a multitude of reasons that family and friends won't read your works. Do you have time…